The sculptor of a statue commemorating the victims of China's 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown said on Friday that its removal from a Hong Kong university was "brutal" but any damage would be symbolic of recent changes in the city under Chinese rule.

The eight-metre (26-foot) sculpture of anguished human torsos was one of the few remaining public memorials in the former British colony to remember the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters - a taboo topic in mainland China, where it cannot be publicly commemorated...